My PC guru,
http://www.tweakguides.com/TGTC.html
as well as a lot of other (non-microsoft) sources, recommend not turning paging files off. Apparently windows just doesn't deal with it not being there.
Instead, you should do what you've already done (ie, temporarily turn it off while you defrag the rest of the drive) then set a fixed size which reflects the kind of use it gets.
Fixed size is the key thing.
So set the minimum and maximum to the same size.
By doing this, you tie down the size of the page file so windows can't jump in and arbitrarily change it's size based on bad usage data. Windows will do this all the time if you let it, which leads to a fragmented pagefile, terrible disk performance and therefore poor system speed.
You can make the pagefile quite small, especially if you don't have many applications open at a time, and depending on how much RAM you have. A "one application at a time" kind of user/setup with 1G of RAM, could probably get away with 512M. The size tweakguides (Korush Gazhi) recommends is 2G, (although that is geared towards gaming rigs). I use 1G, which seems just fine. (and I also play some fairly system intensive games)(I only have 1G of RAM)

Windows deals perfectly well with the paging file turned off, basically if you run out of ram it crashes.

I tend not to have a paging file setup, for machines with slow or overloaded disk systems you will see a speed improvement.

Also if you don't get near using all your ram you don't need a paging file. Virtual memory should only be used if you do not have enough ram for thw work you do on the machine.

If you do then use a fixed size for it and place it on a disk that doesn't get used much. It is always a good idea not to have it on your main system disk. Recommendations are to set it to 1.5 times the size of your ram, why this would be I don't know.

Get PerfectDisk defragger, this deals with this sort of stuff quite well and can be used to move paging files to the part of the disk with better seek times.

Also interestingly enough, the guy sitting next to me heres dad was the co-inventor of virtual memory, Prof Frank Sumner.

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